I followed her to the inn door, and bade her rest without fear, assuring
her that I would die ere the least harm should befall her.
"Nay," she answered smiling, "I would endure much harm rather than buy
security at such a price."
For an instant her smooth and delicate fingers lay in mine. Then they
were swiftly withdrawn, and she passed in, while I stood outside to muse,
in the gathering dusk, upon the great change that had come over the world
since my first meeting with her, six hours before. The very stars and sky
seemed to smile upon me; the moonlight seemed to shine for me consciously
with a greater softness; the very smell of the earth and grass and trees
had grown sweeter to me. I thought how barren, though I had not known it,
the world had been before this transformation, and how unendurable to me
would be a return of that barrenness.
I rejoined the now somewhat boisterous party at the wine-butt in time to
catch Blaise making an attempt to kiss Jeannotte, who was maintaining a
fair pretence of resistance. She seemed rather displeased at my return,
for as Blaise, unabashedly, continued his efforts, she was compelled, in
order to make her coyness seem real to me, to break from him, and flee
into the inn.
Blaise, in whom the spirit of his father was now manifestly gaming the
ascendancy, consoled himself for the absence of Jeannotte by drinking
more heroically and betaking to song.
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